


Trickster

by sxetia



Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: AU, Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Content, Canon-Typical Violence, Female Kurusu Akira, First Person Perspective, Gen, Genderswap, Tags And Warnings In Chapter Summaries, What-If, rough chronological order
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:46:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24737899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sxetia/pseuds/sxetia
Summary: Your name is Akira Kurusu. The first crime you ever committed was being a woman.
Relationships: they’ll come trust me
Comments: 14
Kudos: 48





	1. prologue — inaba

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was heavily inspired by the female Joker art of twitter user raibellchiori, seen here: https://twitter.com/raibellchiori/status/1264253630967771137
> 
> furthermore, the choice of second person perspective was taken from futuresoon’s fic Still Waters, found here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2417264. while I had the idea for this before I read their work, I have to commend their choice for the perspective and tense. the cadence works perfectly for this sort of idea, I believe.
> 
> the exact same content warnings that apply to Persona 5 proper apply here, most of which with varying degrees of intensity as the contents change to fit the new perspective. still; each chapter will be given a content warning for the sake of reader safety.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter contains an instance of attempted sexual assault and sexual harassment, as well as allusions to misogyny and depictions of physical violence.

Your parents named you Akira — written with the same kanji for _dawn,_ something so gentle and serene. It’s never fitted you. You’re tall, gangly and have a cat’s face, and most people look away if you try and maintain eye contact for too long. It always perplexed you, how people are so eager to cast judgement before you’ve so much as opened your mouth. Not that you’ve ever been much of one to defy stereotypes: you’re assertive, terse, and don’t hold much regard for being polite. 

You learned this no-nonsense demeanor from your dad, and he chastises you for it. He says it’s unladylike. Your mom has never bothered teaching you how to be a proper lady. Not that you’ve ever had much interest in learning, but off principle of being chastised for not being taught something irks you. It’s their responsibility. Not yours. 

You have a habit of accentuating the negative; things aren’t _all_ bad at home. Just the same growing pains any moody teenage girl faces with her family. You like it that way; you’re perfectly normal, unassuming and able to blend in until you find your place in society.

Your parents named you Akira, and when the old man calls out asking for your name you keep that information a secret. You try and act like you never heard him to begin with, but he’s smarter than the average drunk. Smart enough to know you’re faking it, and that the angry look on your face doesn’t just come naturally. That’s what he has to think, anyways. It _is_ natural and it _is_ just who you are, but you don’t have any interest in telling him that. He can assume whatever he wants — just like everybody else. 

You just want to make it home before dad tears you a new one for staying out too late (again) and mom pesters you about where you’ve been.

When you pick up the pace, his footsteps follow. Faster, heavier. He asks where you’re going and you know that it’s none of his business, but you tell him you’re just going home. He asks if you can’t stay for a minute, and in lieu of waiting for a reply he just grabs your wrist. He was expecting you to scream, but the growl you offer in tandem with the glare in your eyes catches him off guard.

You jerk your hand away, but his grip is true. The stench of alcohol is heavy on his breath, and it makes you want to vomit all over his fancy blue suit.

Inch by inch you work your left hand to the pocket of your shorts. You grip the rubber case of your cell phone. “Let go,” you demand — it’s low, it’s husky, it’s _unladylike,_ everything that a man doesn’t like, but you know people like this just want power, to hurt somebody else.

“Don’t give me that shit,” he curses, and tugs you harder against him. Fingers graze against the inside of your thigh, and as soon as you feel them creeping inwards you jerk your entire lower body backwards to escape his touch.

You threaten to call the cops, but he just laughs and peers at you from behind thick orange sunglasses. You can barely make out his irises, or his eyes at all through those shades. It’s hard to make out what he’s thinking, or where he’s looking, or much of anything at all. 

Without his eyes it begins to get hard to see him as any one thing to begin with. He’s not a man, or a person, or anything.

He’s a threat, a concept, a manifestation of all the concerns and consternations that have come to gestate inside your chest in the past year. Inaba is a small town, conservative and secular, and with every passing minute you feel another eyeball open up from the ether and glare right into your soul.

Who are you, anyways? Why are they so interested in looking at you? Why do they all look at you if you just end up isolated, at the end of it all? And most importantly, why did this guy pick _you_ when your parents constantly get on your case about how unladylike you are?

You were in the wrong place, at the wrong time. And you were a woman, the greatest sin of all.

“Call them if you want,” he slurs. “The police are my bitches. They’re not gonna take you seriously.”

His fingernails dig into your skin, and you feel like you might start bleeding at any second. There’s nothing but anger in your eyes, but the hot mush of fear is starting to bubble up in your throat. A burning in your eyes, the fear and humiliation and the _anger_ blurring your vision and streaming down your gaunt cheeks.

Sirens in the distance, a salvation that’ll come far, far too late. He’s ushering you to get into his car, calling you an incompetent fool, all these things you can’t focus on because of how _angry_ you are about your demolished pride and how he thinks he can just walk up and _take it_ from you.

You’re not going to let him do that.

Your knee moves without thinking, all on instinct born from your desire to hold what’s yours. It goes for his groin first, and the air is forced from his lungs in an agonized wheeze. He slurs out one insult or another, but you don’t hear it. You want him to get as far away as he can and you’re not willing to wait for it. 

The hand that had reached for your phone is balled into a fist from the tension. This time you think about it _really_ hard when you swing it right at his temple. It connects and makes a smacking noise, where he tumbles to the ground and hits his head on the concrete, face-down.

Those glasses skitter across the pavement, and stained gray is painted with drops of bitter crimson. It’s your favorite color, but seeing it now just makes you feel sick. The sirens are getting closer. The thought that you might have just killed a man doesn’t bother you very much. You just worry that the _others_ won’t understand the situation you’re in.

He groans and rolls over on his side, and you almost feel disappointed when he begins to get up. You plant one boot on the ground just in case you need to swing the other, to prove your point. There’s a bust in his forehead, blood forcing him to shut one eye and streaming down the bridge of his nose. One false move and you’ll kick him right in the nostrils and break his nose. You promise it to yourself.

All he does is lurch forward and mumble curses. He calls you a _brat,_ repeats over and over again that he’ll _sue._ He asks if you know who he is. You wonder if he cares who you are. You can tell he doesn’t, because all he thinks of you as is a _bitch._ He says it over and over again, like it’ll make the pain go away or erase the bruise to his ego you’ve incurred.

The sirens close in, and the lights illuminate the dull surroundings of your prison. You think your salvation has arrived, that you’ll be able to put it all behind you soon.

Then the cops arrive, and a look of familiarity flashes over their faces as they lock eyes with your abuser-turned-accuser. 

“Oh…! It’s you, sir.”

You realize at that moment just how unfair the world is. You didn’t even do anything wrong.

Soon there are different, stronger hands forcing you up against a wall. Your wrists are bound and your words go unheard. The last thing you see before you’re enslaved is a cop car’s backdoor slamming shut to seal you away.

As the car pulls away you see the man stumbling back down the road. You can’t remember what his face looks like anymore.


	2. xxi: judgment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter contains heavy canon-compliant allusion to sexual assault and misogyny, as well as depictions of torture, violence against women, and forced drug use. please keep this in mind before reading.

It’s been almost a year since the last time you felt the rough hands of the police forcing you down and robbing you of your agency. It’s different this time. The first time it happened they were reclaiming something that they had been so nice to _give_ you. It hurt, but it was a privilege being lost. 

This time you’ve spent every waking hour of the last six months fighting for your freedom, ripping it away from the body of the systems that treated your life like a toy, and holding it close to your heart with one hand and keeping a gun in the other. It’s the only thing you have. You could lose everything else and keep going, because you are _free_ and for the first time in your life you are _alive_ and that is the only thing in the God damn world that matters. 

When they force you against the ground and force their fingers into your hair you want to flay every single inch of skin from your bones and leave it to rot. It’s worse than last time. It’s so much worse, because you can’t stop thinking about last time now, even when you don’t want to. The memory tears its way into the forefront of your visage. It’s a noose around your neck. You can’t breathe. 

In the Metaverse, you’re unstoppable. You have power. You’re not _Akira Kurusu,_ some _bitch_ with a mean look on her face who thinks she’s too good to talk to anybody else. You’re _the Joker._ But they’ve even taken that away from you, now. You’re just a normal teenage girl who is being pinned underneath ten police officers. 

You release a scream, though you don’t mean to. You tell them to let you go, and you want to say more, but it doesn’t come out — just empty shrieks that ache your lungs and shred your larynx. 

One of them tells you to _shut the fuck up_ and sends a boot into the back of your head. The impact makes your vision go hazy as your brain rocks around in your skull. Your chin hits the concrete and forces your teeth to clamp down around your tongue. The pain evokes tears and the taste of blood. 

“Hold on, she’s just a kid…!” one of the pigs screams, as if his sympathy means anything to you. 

“Who cares?” asks another. You can’t help but echo his sentiment in your head: why _would_ they care? 

This isn’t a sobering experience. This isn’t anything new. You don’t learn anything from this, because this is the only truth in this world: those with power will abuse those without it.

* * *

Memories and cognition cluster together in your mind and stick to the inside of your brain, clotted like blood cells seconds away from giving you a stroke. Come to think of it, you feel like you had a stroke anyways: everything is numb and you can barely move, sensory perception muted to where all you can feel is the sting of bright lights and the deafening pulse of all the aches along your body. You taste fear and smell blood — your blood. You want to wipe it away but something is keeping your hands from moving, forced behind your back. 

Everything slowly begins to come together in your mind, one trauma at a time: dried blood is congealed on your upper lip and has pooled a little in your mouth in your unconscious state. You’re bruised, inside and out — all over your chest, your back, your face, your legs. 

Your legs — up the inside of your thighs. If you tore off your stockings you just know you’d see finger-shaped stretches of discolored skin, everywhere from the inside of your leg near your scraped-up knee to the taut curve of your ass. 

The thought evokes an indescribable feeling that comes from somewhere far more fragile than your body. Suddenly the weight in your head is a hundred times heavier and the nausea overwhelms every other one of your senses. You weakly groan and struggle against the chair — that’s right, you’re bound to a chair — before turning your head to the side and vomiting into the corner of the dingy cell you’re locked up in. 

You are but a prisoner, wallowing in your own filth. 

Time doesn’t pass like it should, and your mind isn’t as sharp as usual. The blade in your brain has been dulled, equally as useless as a knife without a point. 

You should be scheming, thinking your way out of this. Your mind should rest with your friends and your concern for them. You shouldn’t be worrying about **him,** but you are. There has to be a misunderstanding, there has to be more to it than simple betrayal, but something one of the pigs said repeats over and over again. _You were sold out, kid._

Your hatred grows. Your anger grows. Your sorrow grows. The flame within you burns bright, but is reduced to smolders by the tumultuous storm clouds that twist and turn around it.

A figure appears before you, and you can’t tell just where he came from. He says something and you don’t understand a word of it, so you pretend to sit in defiant silence. He makes a noise — a scoff, a swear, a one-liner, you can’t tell — and then his limb is moving, a blur of black and gray, and there’s agony in your chin and you’re on your side and everything _hurts._

The sound of wood splintering rings out like a gunshot, and the pain of the shards sticking into your back and legs forces you to weakly groan. Your face is inches away from your own puke, and the stench is overwhelming. 

You turn away from it and writhe on the ground like a dog ready to be put down, until the suit grabs you by your hair and forces you to look up at him. You manage to sit up and prop yourself against the wall to negate the fear that your scalp is about to be separated from your skull.

At this angle, you can narrowly make out the shape of a syringe near his feet. You wonder if it was his idea. 

He forces something in you face — two somethings, one rectangular and wide and the other short and narrow. A pen and paper, complete with clipboard. 

“Sign,” he demands. “It’s a confession.”

“Fuck you.” It takes every last scrap of defiance and energy within you to slap the clipboard away, and he growls as he slaps you in the face for retribution. It doesn’t hurt so much to be hit as much as it does to be debased.

You want to pounce on top of him and beat him to death. If you met his Shadow you wouldn’t hesitate to put one between his eyes. 

“Next time you refuse I’m not gonna be so nice,” he says as he plants a shoe on top of your leg, which plants it at an awkward angle. It wouldn’t take much to snap it at this rate, and your joints are already calling out at you that something is wrong. 

With trembling hands you take the clipboard and stumble across the page until you find the dotted line. 

Your name — what’s your name? You don’t remember. Your mind is riddled with bullet holes. You know who you are, but what is an identity without a name? 

It doesn’t matter. You’re the Joker. That’s who you are, truly, and the facade you wear every day is just to hide away the truth from those who couldn’t bear to see just what you are on the inside. 

_Kurusu Akira._

You don’t know where that name came from, or why your arm moved and put the hiragana on the page. The suit seems satisfied with that, and snatches it out of your hands. He monologues about something or another, but you can’t understand a single word of it and wouldn’t care even if he did. 

Your consciousness fades out of lucidity and the world starts to turn to mush again. A light — another chair, a cold metal table, and a figure in gray seated across from you. Intense features that cast judgement upon your disheveled and bruised appearance, and a dominant posture that you would have feared a year ago. 

A woman, like yourself. You’re something vaguely close to relieved, but there’s a scowl on your chapped lips all the same.

* * *

It’s not so much an interrogation as it is this stranger barking out her demands as you sit in sullen silence, fingers grazing your throbbing temples. Most of her speeches fall upon deaf ears as the words jumble together and turn to a mess of incoherent syllables, the drugs in your bloodstream acting as an impenetrable barrier between you and your captors.

You like it that way — being sealed away. It’s you versus _them._

At some point you barely have the strength to hold yourself up, and your forehead hits the steel table with a shrill _pang._ You don’t feel it. The prosecutor releases a groan of irritation. “What did they _do_ to you…?” she asks, and that concern — that regard, that acknowledgement of there being a _them_ implying an _us,_ a _you,_ a _me…_

You force yourself to sit up and try to look her in the eye, and your words come out as a choked, wet gurgle. “Don’t worry about it,” you insist; you’re already too late. She’s already let eyes linger on the needle and allowed anger to grow in her eyes. It’s a familiar anger, the one you’ve had burning you up from the inside every single day for the past year. The _hate,_ the _resentment._

She looks at you again, and you share a moment of sober understanding of the relationship between vulnerable women, men, and the drugs one use on the other. It feels like the eye contact lasts an hour, but for all you know it could be half a second. Whatever’s in your veins makes it impossible to tell. 

It’s humiliating. You are strong, you are invulnerable, and you don’t let anything or any _one_ hurt you, no matter what. And if they manage to keep you down, you take them out. That’s how it’s always been, and it’s a status quo you dedicate every fiber of your being to maintaining. 

And yet here this other woman is, staring into a bruised soul within a body equally as beaten. Her face has changed; a little softer, more patient. She reminds you of yourself, in the way that staring into a mirror reminds one of themselves: a woman who is strong not because she wants to, but because she _must_ be. A tiger who was not born with her stripes and fangs, but who earned them by means of scars and the necessity to defend herself from them. 

But, you could just be projecting what you want her to be and not what she actually is. After all; what have you ever known about making genuine connections and understanding other people? No matter who they are, people are an asset, something for you to use to your own ends. They’re _allies, confidants, partners in crime,_ but not _friends_ and certainly not _family._

You haven’t trusted anybody ever since you left Inaba. No matter how hard you try, you remain a prisoner to your own short-sighted consternation. There is no escape. 

When you remind yourself of this you break the eye contact and slouch forwards once more, then bite down on the inside of your mouth. 

The prosecutor sighs. “Let’s try this again: I’m Niijima Sae, a prosecutor for the Tokyo District Special Investigation Department.” 

The SIU — _he_ worked with them. Didn’t he…? It would make sense, since there was a _traitor,_ and since there would have to be a mole with an in on the team, then—… 

Your eyeballs swell and vibrate with pain as you stumble over another gap in your memory. Another crack where your objective permanence used to be, and when you reach into that mental crevasse something bites you and forces you to pull back. A thumb on your temple and the other four fingers splaying across your forehead, and you look away. 

“...They’re going to try to lock you up without any regard for the full picture, or caring enough to even try and get it. But I want your side of the story — just in case there’s anything we’re missing. If you collaborate with me…” Sae sighs, shuts her eyes for a few moments to regain her bearings, then reopens them. “...I’ll see what I can do. Do we have a deal?” 

You scoff through your nose. “Do I really have a choice?” 

She quirks her lips up, almost a smile. You don’t see what’s so funny. “I suppose not. There’s no way I can force what I need out of you, but it’s either you work with me or guarantee yourself a cold cell for the rest of your life.” 

It’s a fancy way for her to say _no, of course not._ Maybe you can buy some time by making something up, or by drawing out the truths as long as you can. 

“All right,” you say. “I might as well. There’s probably not a lot you don’t already know, considering—…” 

_Him._ You grit your teeth. 

“From the beginning,” Sae instructs, both hands palm-down on the table.

* * *

You tell Sae everything, relaying piece by piece of your story as it begins to reassemble itself in your cracked-open skull. You skip out on the finer details — the Metaverse, your Persona, the concept of a Shadow — since you figure that since _he_ has a hand in all of this, the SIU already knows.

“Why’d you do it…?” 

One corner of your lips contorts into a sneer, and you pinch the bridge of your nose. 

“Isn’t it obvious…? Because I had to.”

“...What do you mean?” Sae hesitates as she speaks, squinting as if she’s unconvinced of your attitude.

Maybe she’s not as much of a kindred spirit as you once believed. 

That the only reason you began to bite the hand that feeds was because the very same hand forced your face to the floor. You acted first to defend yourself, then out of revenge — both for yourself and others who had suffered the same abuse that you had. Then from there it grew into defending those who were in need, and preventing abuse from ever happening. 

To change society one corrupt heart at a time; that’s the modus operandi of the Phantom Thieves on paper, and what any other of your companions will have tell you if you ask them. For you, it’s moreso a matter of revenge and putting those who keep you down in their place. Luckily, you’re a great liar — it’s what got you this far to begin with. 

Both of Sae’s arms cross over her ribcage as she leans back in her chair. She remains quiet for a long time as if digesting it, and rather than commenting on the sparks that started the blaze, she cuts straight to the point: “You had to have help, right…? There’s no way that you could have acted in solitude.” 

“I work alone,” you insist. “I **don’t** need anybody else’s help.” As much as you loathe the idea of rotting in a cell forever, you’re not going to become what it is you hate the most: somebody who puts others down to get ahead. “All of this was _my_ idea, nobody else’s.” 

Sae frowns, her strong brow crinkling over bright red eyes. You can feel the judgement drilling holes in your skin. “I don’t buy it. There’s too much logistical and practical work that goes into the operations you’ve described for it to be a one-woman operation. Tactical planning, the equipment, medical supplies and weapons we found you with, learning how to use a gun, your knack for subterfuge and politicking — hell, even just managing to get so much _done_ while maintaining a straight-A average in school. Connections in the press, your online presence, the way that things seem to fall a bit _too_ neatly into place for you… all of this on your own?” 

A name flickers into your mind for each and every practical purpose. A face, a story, a use, and the distant impression of a tarot card for each one. None of them need to be any more involved than they already are, so you steel your face and nod your head. “Yes. All me. Don’t underestimate me just because of my age, I know what I’m fucking doing.” 

“So you insist, and yet here you are in a police station instead of being free to do as you please.” 

You bare your teeth and release a growl, then slouch a little in your seat. “I was set up.” 

“Mmhn. Even so — the practical side of things. It’s the Phantom _Thieves_ not the Phantom Thief. We know there’s at least others who help you with these… _heists,_ as you say, on account of our inside source. What about them?” 

A knot twists in your stomach at the thought of your comrades being apprehended. They’re all under your command, with you being responsible for each and every one of their fates. The same demeanor that made you hated and feared as a student makes you admired and respected as a leader — all it takes to succeed is a position of power. 

“There were others,” you admit. 

“So let’s make things clear, then,” she says as she retrieves a clipboard from her briefcase and lays it out in front of you. Eight names, including _his._ Eight thieves, spread out across your mental web of confidants and allies, interconnected with one another to form a set of links that break under no force.

You’re unstoppable, all of you, with your powers combined. Nothing can slow a tidal wave once it’s begun to build up, particularly when the pressure behind it is set to take down entire cities. 

Maybe it’ll end with you. Maybe it won’t. If your wings are clipped here and you’re left with a legacy of revolution, you’ll at least find a cold comfort in it. 

The list stares at you for a few moments — the first name immediately evokes the imagery of a crass exterior guarding a pure heart, youthful screams crossed with fidgeting legs and poorly-dyed hair. 

In an instant, it all comes back to you. It is April, and it is your first day of your second year at Shujin Academy.


End file.
